Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Coens to adapt Chabon!?!


Yup, I think the Coen Bros. have firmly put The Lady Killers behind them. With this news, the filmmaking duo will soon occupy a new creative zipcode -- miles away from anyone in Hollywood (more miles than they already are). Variety says Joel and Ethan Coen's newest project will be an adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Now there's still the matter of shooting A Serious Man, which I don't claim to know anything about, but the Chabon adaptation should be your typically divisive/amazing/confounding Coen film. Chabon wrote The Wonder Boys and one of his other novels, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is also in development as a movie.

I haven't read Yiddish Policemen's Union, I don't read many books -- but I have very strongly considered reading the Chabon novel, and for me that's pretty good. By all accounts it's a wildly original and bizarre story from an alternate history where Alaska serves as a Jewish refugee settlement after WWII, where we're served a pulpy detective tale. Yeah, this isn't the kind of story for Shawn Levy or Paul W.S. Anderson. Bravo (again), Coens.

2 comments:

Jonathan Pacheco said...

I haven't read the novel yet either, but if it's "pulpy", I'm hoping for some gorgeous Man Who Wasn't There type of photography.

Adam Ross said...

The Alaskan setting should be quite a canvas for the Coens, and for some reason I can see it being black and white like The Man Who Wasn't There.